I have a 200mm x 200mm, 0.5mm brass sheet out of which I need to cut about 200 or so organic shapes with a 1mm end mill.
I’m wondering that during the cutting process if the endmill breaks at some point, how would I reset the toolpaths to start where the end mill broke off?
According to CC, the whole process should take about 4 plus hours. Is it alright to do this in one session or is there a good reason to break up the operation?
In terms of pricing for this job, how would you calculate how much to charge?
Thank you very much in advance for your input.
Gunter
In any given toolpath, I don’t think there is any way of ‘forcing’ a particular order of cutting. So, your best bet may be to have multiple toolpaths, each small enough that you either don’t care about running the whole path if you need to resume there, or small enough that you can individually de-select the items that have completed.
The toolpaths will run in the order that they are listed in CC, so if (for example) the bit breaks while cutting say the 7th toolpath, you can just disable toolpaths 1->6 and resave.
You can duplicate toolpaths, so once you have the first group set up properly, just duplicate it, then change the vectors it applies to.
Yes as @mhotchin suggests would be wise. If the whole job is one big tool path you have two options.
Start the job over and let it cut already objects.
If you notice where the line number is where the problem starts then take the gcode (requires Pro Version of CC) and find that line number and back up to the last rapid move. Then copy and paste from there to the end. Then go back and get the preamble and attach that to the start of the file. This is not very elegant and does require the pro version in v7. If v6 then all you need is the gcode.
So the multiple tool paths would be the most efficient if you are worried about breaking a bit. Just check your F&S and make sure you are not cutting too aggressively to avoid breakage. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The multiple tool paths will take the same amount of time to cut as one big one as long as the same bit is used. The tool paths are just cut sequentially as the order in the tool path menu.
If the vectors are all in one operation, you can just change the selection to include only the vectors that haven’t been cut yet. And assuming the cutter broke in the middle of a vector, that partially cut vector too.
